“The boys are back in town,” sing Thin Lizzy over the PA, by way of introduction – but actually, this joyous outdoor gig marks this indie-rock supergroup’s first UK performance. Founded by three solo singer-songwriter pals – the Tennessee-born Julien Baker, Californian Phoebe Bridgers and Richmond, Virginia’s Lucy Dacus – Boygenius embody camaraderie, goofing around and strength in female numbers. Their name cocks a snook at how greatness is still disproportionately ascribed to men, and their offering packs a lot of playful snark.
The three principals have gigged here before individually, but never as Boygenius; it’s also the biggest headline show the band have ever played anywhere. Boygenius have sold out this west London park to the tune of 25,000 tickets (the lineup also features Muna, Ethel Cain and Soak), a feat that follows their UK No 1 album, The Record, released back in March. At the start of the year, Rolling Stone put them on their US cover, styled like Nirvana’s cover shoot from January 1994, calling them “the supergroup we need”.
Tonight, “the boys” come on stage in dapper three-piece suits. Gradually, the jackets come off to reveal shirts accessorised with old-fashioned sleeve garters (Bridgers and Dacus) or – in Baker’s case – a sleeveless white shirt that exposes her tattooed arms. They dedicate an unreleased song, Boyfriends, to “all the boyfriends” – which ends up being quite a wide church, including anyone who “wants to be a boyfriend”. “Who here is gay?” asks Baker, to an affirmative roar.
Naturally, Boygenius are not the first musical women to band together in friendship, or to chafe at sexism. Seventies-era superstars Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt released two Trio LPs (1987 and 1999). Nearly a decade ago, alt-country artists Neko Case, kd lang and Laura Veirs came together for a case/lang/veirs album and tour.
But Boygenius bring a fresh, side-eyed gen Z assurance to mob-handed sisterhood, and a default queerness: they are “sapphic besties”, as one US interviewer had it. There’s a safe space-y feel to this micro-festival: the sun is shining, the chick’n is often vegan, and the vibe seemingly un-toxic. When fans need assistance in the crowd, the band are quick to halt their songs and not start again until they are sure assistance is on its way.
Democracy rules, too – no one performer outshines the others, although Baker probably plays more electric guitar solos and Bridgers is the most well-known of the three. (Boygenius regularly have “throuples” therapy – couples therapy for three – to iron out difficulties.) All three air one song from their solo careers; although many of Boygenius’s songs resist filleting, you’re tempted to ascribe certain songs to certain writers.
True Blue feels like Dacus being matter-of-factly incisive. “When you don’t know who you are, you fuck around and find out,” she sings. In one of the more moving moments of the night, Baker tells the audience how she is “vigorously clinging to life at every opportunity” – an intro to Anti-Curse, about a time she nearly drowned. (“Was anyone ever so young?” she sings. Baker is 27.) For Letter to an Old Poet, Bridgers asks the crowd to put their phones down for a “really intense” song “about the least favourite part of my adult life”. She jumps down into the photographer’s pit to sing it.
If there is a downside to this glorious day out with Boygenius – other than Bridgers’ attempt at a British accent – it’s that their offering is limited to crunchy indie rock, or the slower songs that lean towards folk and country. While the a cappella three-part harmonies on Without You Without Them that they perform offstage at the start of the set are divine, this is a band who don’t move far beyond the 90s revival. Backed by a tight band – drummer Madden Klass, bassist Melina Duterte (who records as Jay Som), keys-violinist Sarah Goldstone and guitarist Tiana Ohara – there are only a couple of more numinous passages tonight that do something other than rock out, or confess emotional sucker-punches in superb three-part harmony.
That said, one of the playful, knowing ironies about Boygenius is how much they actually like a lot of boy geniuses: classic rock, and the chug of 90s alternative guitar music, are persistent motifs. The photo on the cover their debut EP (2018) echoed that of Crosby, Stills and Nash’s own self-titled 1969 album. One Boygenius tune exudes exasperation, and grudging respect, for Leonard Cohen, “an old man having an existential crisis at a Buddhist monastery writing horny poetry”. It’s also very hard to avoid hearing the late Elliott Smith, especially in Bridgers’ phrasings and melodies.
But one of the chief pleasures of Boygenius is how they resolve all these apparent contradictions, absorbing their sources, critiquing them, all the while sounding unmistakably like Boygenius. Not Strong Enough, off the album, has swiftly become a theme tune, and the final bang of the main set.
Helmed mostly by Bridgers, the song self-flagellates about not being “strong enough to be your man”. Then it erupts into a killer chorus. The crowd yell along; the words have justly ended up on a very popular band T-shirt. “Always an angel, never a god,” seethe the three friends repeatedly, building to a cathartic holler.
